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Response of soil extracellular enzyme activity and stoichiometry to short-term warming and phosphorus addition in desert steppe

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Environmental Science

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Introduction

Materials & Methods

Study site

Experimental design

We conducted a randomized split-plot design with two temperature treatments (Control, CK; Warming, W) as the main plot and three P addition levels (0 g m−2 yr−1, 5 g m−2 yr−1, and 10 g m−2 yr−1) as the subplot in April 2022. There were six treatments: P0, P5, P10, WP0, WP5, and WP10, each replicated four times, for a total of 24 treatment plots. A PVC sheet was put into the soil at a depth of 0.8 m to divide each subplot from the main plot, spaced 3 m apart to provide a buffer zone (Fig. S1). Phosphorus fertilizer was supplied by triple superphosphate (Ca (H2PO4)2 H2O), which was evenly distributed in the treatment plots before rainfall from early June to August. Although the rate of phosphorus fertilizer input in this study is higher than the rate at which phosphorus is deposited in the atmosphere of northern China (Zhu et al., 2016), it corresponds to the current agricultural fertilization level in China (Cui et al., 2020; Guo et al., 2022).

Soil sampling and measurements

Soil extracellular enzyme extraction and vector analysis

Statistical analyses

Results

Soil temperature and soil moisture content

Soil properties

Soil microbial biomass and their stoichiometry

Soil enzyme activity and their stoichiometry

Vector analysis

Relationships between soil properties and soil extracellular enzyme activities

Discussion

Short-term warming

Phosphorus addition

The interaction effects of short-term warming and P addition

Conclusions

Supplemental Information

Open-top chambers (OTCs) and control treatments arrangements at the study sites

A randomized split-plot design with two temperature levels (Control, CK; Warming, W) was used as the main plots, and three P addition levels (0 g m−2 yr−1, 5 g m−2 yr−1 , and 10 g m−2 yr−1) were used as the subplots. The main plots were separated from each other by 3 m.

DOI: 10.7717/peerj.16227/supp-2

Mean annual temperature and mean annual precipitation in the study site from 1980 to 2021

DOI: 10.7717/peerj.16227/supp-3

Ratios of ln-transformed C, N, and P acquisition enzymes for the different treatments

BG, β-1,4-glucosidase (nmol−1 g−1 h−1). NAG, β-1,4-Nacetylglucosaminidase (nmol−1 g−1 h−1). LAP, leucine aminopeptidase (nmol g h). ALP, alkaline phosphatase (nmol−1 g−1 h−1).

DOI: 10.7717/peerj.16227/supp-4

Additional Information and Declarations

Competing Interests

The authors declare there are no competing interests.

Author Contributions

Lingxia Feng conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, prepared figures and/or tables, authored or reviewed drafts of the article, and approved the final draft.

Bing Cao conceived and designed the experiments, analyzed the data, authored or reviewed drafts of the article, and approved the final draft.

Xiaojia Wang performed the experiments, analyzed the data, prepared figures and/or tables, and approved the final draft.

Data Availability

The following information was supplied regarding data availability:

The raw measurements are available in the Supplemental Files.

Funding

This work was supported by the Ningxia Key Research and Development Program-Demonstration of Key Technologies for Ecological Restoration and Function Improvement in Luoshan Nature Reserve (2021BEG02009). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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